Once it came to booking a flight to Nairobi, I knew it wouldn’t be complete without an extensive layover in an extravagant city. After days of contemplating, I figured that 12 hours in Paris was the perfect amount of time to explore La Ville Lumière (the city of light). This was single handedly the best decision I had made in a while, in this blog post I will share a quick itinerary detailing the locations I visited in such a condensed amount of time.
The morning started early as we landed at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport at 8:45 am. By the time we had gotten past security, it was 9:30 am. We quickly changed into a fresh pair of clothes after which we hopped into a taxi straight to the Eiffel tower. Traffic was terrible, it took approximately 50 minutes to arrive to our destination. A pro was the fact that taxis in Paris had set pricing as opposed to a metered approach which would have run up quite the tab.
After grabbing a variety of images with the famous monument, we embarked on a 25 minute walk to the Arc de Triomphe. We spent around an hour exploring the various boutiques that lined Avenue Des Champs-Élysées.
Once the clock struck 12:45, we made our way to the closest subway station where we were able to get a day pass for as cheap as 10 Euros. About six stops and 15 minutes later, we were at the Louvre museum where we got to experience the atmosphere and walk around. We spent no more than half an hour here as we were on a tight schedule. Once we felt satisfied, we picked up on our journey once again, this time heading towards the Notre Dame.
Our final stop of the day was at the world famous Roman catholic church Sacré-Cœur. The walk up the hill was exhausting but rewarding once we reached the top. We spent our time here walking around, taking pictures, and having lunch.
At this point our legs started to give out and we decided it was time to catch a taxi back to the airport in order to have plenty of time to check in and make it to our flight. We had another long flight (7 hours & 35 mins) to Nairobi, Kenya which further exhausted us.
Once we had arrived to Kenya, we made sure to convert some money into shillings we could use towards food, transportation, and to purchase a sim card. Our arrival was met with some difficulty as we did not have the proper form filled out (to verify our vaccinations), thankfully the guards were nice enough to let it slide upon inspection of our Canadian vaccine certificates. We also had to deal with another instance where one of our checked bags was subject to a “random security check.” Upon finding some vitamin supplements, we were asked to pay an additional fee of $50, which we were also able to avoid once the guards had realized we were here to Intern at Aga Khan University Hospital. At this point, we were free to leave the airport. We quickly flagged down our assigned driver and made our way to the residence. Once we arrived, we slept for hours upon hours in hopes to recover from the past two days of travel.
Mohammad Almaradweh – Western Heads East 